Art and Space

Code:

AE311

Acronym:

AE

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Fine Arts/Sculpture

Instance: 2012/2013 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Fine Arts Department
Course/CS Responsible:	Fine Arts

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
AP	26	Official Study Plan 2011	3	-	4,5	64	121,5

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

Subject’s general context
Consolidate and focus on the knowledge acquired by the student in the previous years, in the sphere of sculpture, working specifically the volumes’/volumetries’ construction from space, as consequence of a project’s practice.
Promote the confrontation with space as art’s essence, finding out the conceptual differences in the applying and developing of the project’s processes as well as in the implied technical processes.
Being acquainted with methodologies and sculpture’s execution processes as a project’s and technical process specific of constructuion/ intervention of/ in space; knowing the means, the materials and the expressive languages involved; denoting availability to experiment and inovate, having the capacity to materialize the enunciated projects, maximizing an individual formal language.

Subject’s specific context
Being able to interpret and analyse a public space of small or medium scale, and define its characteristics as a place.

Knowing to use the means, the processes and the taught content in the developing of artistic projects directed to the place, bearing in mind the physical dimensions as well as the conceptual, contextual (implications of artistic scope and of disciplinary transversality) and temporal dimensions, creating and producing through individual or team work.

Program

Summary
The subject “Art and space” is based on space as essence of art. The discovery of space as artistic quality, in the 20th century’s purity (?), and the historical reorientations to which it led in the passing of all this century, established new relations between space and sculpture, between space and architecture and a new condition for the relation of sculpture with architecture and even other subjects, of which Landscape Architecture stands out.
“Art and Space” is naturally drawn to the execution of creative and investigation projects, single or in groups, at the project’s level (in small scale and with previous model) and its natural scale materialization that, when possible, respects the adressed principles under the above mentioned concepts. The technological matters and ambiences will be of free choice, according to the possibilities offered by FBAUP’s atliers.


Content synthesis

1 – Art and Space
1.1 – Context
1.2 – Sculpture’s concept redefinition
1.2 – From Auguste Rodin to Robert Smithson

2 – Site, Place and Urbanscape
2.1 – Site and Non-Site
2.1.1 – Robert Smithson and the concept of Site and Non-Site
2.1.2 – Genealogy of Site Specificity
2.1.3 – Action, development and consequences of Site Specificity
2.2 – Place
2.2.1 – The meanings/senses of Place
2.2.2 – Genius Locci and the garden as art
2.2.3 – From de garden as art to sculpture in the enlarged field
2.3 – In praise of anachronism
2.3.1 – The analytic grid of Rosalind krauss
2.3.2 – The Garden and the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk
2.3.3 – The history’s gardens have been taken by the time’s sites

3 – Operativ processes and methodologies
3.1 – From carving and molding to the project
3.2 – The project, the scale and the constructive process
3.3 – The sculpture in the enlarged field and the trans/interdisciplinarity’s operativity

Mandatory literature

Javier Maderuelo; LA IDEIA DE ESPAÇO EN LA ARQUITECTURA Y EL ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEOS, AKAL, 2009. ISBN: 978-84-460-1261-0

Complementary Bibliography

WEISS, A.; Unnatural horizons: paradox and contradition in landscape architecture. New York:., Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. ISBN: 1-56898-139-2

Teaching methods and learning activities

3 – Operativ processes and methodologies
3.1 – From carving and molding to the project
3.2 – The project, the scale and the constructive process
3.3 – The sculpture in the enlarged field and the trans/interdisciplinarity’s operativity





The 121,5 work hours of the 1st semester (HTS) in this subject are organized as following:
68 hours of semestrial contact (HCS), distributed throughout theoretical and theortical-practical classes.
Theoretical classes are characterized by its presentation and explanation of programmatic contents.

Theoretical-practical classes:
Making, developing and exploring the contents and the exercises;
Analysis, critique and united evaluation of obtained results


The remaining 63,5 (HTS) hours are used in the developing and deepening of the impied practice, from the specific enunciation of contents’ exploration. The objects of study will be visits to exhibitions and places of interest to the subject, the participation in seminars, workshops, as well as other activities that might converge to the support in the developing of this subject’s objectives.
In this context, each student is asked the organization of a diary (paper and digital format), where the work developed along the semester is written down.
If the students so desire, they might also produce a diary-object, which outgrows its documental dimension and constitutes itself as a complement to the works and projects developed in the subject.

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Description	Type	Time (hours)	Weight (%)	End date
Attendance (estimated)	Participação presencial	76,00
	Total:	-	0,00

Eligibility for exams

The assessment is continuous without loss if combined with other assessment methods, namely of two inserted assessment moments and one final assessment moment (with dates to be defined in the beginning of the semester between the teachers) and the students.
The assiduous presence in classes shall assure qualitative and quantitative information at any time, independently of the fixed assessment periods.
An attendance register for each student will be made by the teacher.
The afore mentioned qualitative and quantitative information is assured through the regular developing of the practical works and of its theoretical reflection framing, as well as its discussion.
Final assessment/classification factors: the effective student’s presential participation in the class/atlier; the performance and concretion capacity at a technical level; the capacity to experiment and be open minded towards risk; the quality of the concluded work; the registration of the work developed along the semester in paper and/or digital diary; the investigation and development of theoretical contents.

Calculation formula of final grade

Final classification equal or superiro to 10 (ten).

Final evaluation’s calculation
Assiduous presence and fulfilling of what is established in the subject’s syllabus.

Examinations or Special Assignments

Students must execute one single exercice, developed in various stages, through the project’s process. That exercice should be directed to FBAUP’s Garden or to Porto’s Botanic Garden (Passeio Alegre). To begin their work, the students should start by the finding of the sites they intend to work, through freehand sketching (without other means’ disservice), studying morfologically the place and the circumstances of its future intervention’s proposal.
In this phase, the scale to be worked on is reduced in relation to the future project conveived for that public space, which will include the respective description or descriptive memory, enlightening enough so that it might become evident what the object/construction to be produced in actual size will be. The project does not dismiss the model made to scale. The students will elect the technologic ambiences that better adapt to the project’s and/or object’s nature and sensitiveness.
The assignment might furthermore promote rupture from traditional means (habits, but also materials) as indispensable factor in the prosecution of originality.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Students will be able to choose the development of a single exercise or of several exercises, in which they can work on their sculpturesque practices, be it of Subtractive or Additive and Constructive character, finding out the conceptual differences in the applying of the several technical processes implied, bearing in mind the matter’s and material’s formal vocation, and likewise the concept of scale.
In the case of opting for a single exercise, the students should, in that same work, develop questions concerning the matters and materials of subtractive nature or the ones of additive nature, the construction and assemblage concepts. In both cases, the scale notion must be worked on.
All pupils will execute a small reflection work/text, which, through their motivations, developed project(s) and obtained outcomes, might evince in which way the subject developed and possibly answered to their expectations.

Observations

Meeting with students will happen on Thursdays from 4p.m. to 6p.m., in the wooden pavilion/ Pavilhão de Madeira, or in other places that feel convenient, according to the spaces in which the works are being developed in and with previous arrangement.

Beyond the present bibliography, more complementary titles will be lent and provided during the passing of classes, so that the specific support needed in the student’s individual work’s developing is given.
Part of the books and documents mentioned and to be used are scanned and can be requested in FBAUP’s library, under the subject “Art and Space”.